Bonobos communicate using a universal principle of human languages

[cbabe]

https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-04-04/bonobos-communicate-using-a-universal-principle-of-human-languages.html

Bonobos communicate using a universal principle of human languages

The ability to put together meaningful ‘words’ to form a ‘sentence’ with a new meaning was thought to be unique to humans

MIGUEL ÁNGEL CRIADO
APR 04, 2025 - 05:32 EDT

Although their respective lineages diverged millions of years ago, bonobos and humans share 98.7% of their genome (the same as chimpanzees). Bonobos — which are endangered, with fewer than 20,000 remaining in the protected forests of the Democratic Republic of the Congo — are known for their remarkable ability to communicate, even with humans. Now, research published in Science shows that they combine their vocalizations in a way that mirrors how humans put words together to form sentences, enabling them to communicate more complex messages. This ability was once thought to be unique to humans.

All human languages adhere to a principle that linguists call compositionality. Postulated in the 19th century by the German mathematician and philosopher Gottlob Frege, its simplest version resembles a mathematical formula: the meaning of a combination is the sum of the meanings of its parts. To explain compositionality, the authors of the study provide a very simple example: the word “biology,” which is made up of two equally significant morphemes, bio (life) and logy (science).

…
“As I followed them, I used a microphone to record their vocalizations and systematically document the context in which each vocalization occurred,” Berthet explains. For each one, she consulted a list of more than 300 parameters to comprehensively describe the context. “For example, I noted whether there was a neighboring group nearby, whether food was present, whether the caller was eating, resting, or grooming, and what happened immediately after the vocalization…”

By analyzing correlations between a call’s output and context, she was able to identify patterns. “If a particular vocalization was always followed by the entire group moving, it probably indicates that this call means ‘let’s travel,‘” she explains. Using this approach, they were able to uncover the meaning of several thousand vocalizations. Now the researchers had to determine if the bonobos combined the vocalizations and if the combinations had their own meaning.

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[Irish_Dem]

1. Language acquisition is hard wired in mammals.

May not be human language, but some sort of communication process.